


of realities and impossibilities

by tkreyesevandiaz



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Caring Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Caring Evan "Buck" Buckley, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz, Hopeful Ending, Introspection, M/M, POV Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Soft Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz, flowery words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29019549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tkreyesevandiaz/pseuds/tkreyesevandiaz
Summary: Some days hit a little too close to home, leaving Buck and Eddie untethered.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz
Comments: 34
Kudos: 172





	of realities and impossibilities

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry I've been missing for a hot minute! This is the longest I've gone without posting something since I started writing for Buddie xD
> 
> Anyway this is just them taking care of each other!
> 
> Warnings: Car accident mentions, trauma mentions, hurt/comfort.  
> There's a slight spoiler for 4x01, but it's not central to the plot in any way.

It’s one moment in a sea of thousands.

Eddie thinks to himself that it’s been a long time since they’ve been able to catch a break. One after the other, their world has kept crumbling around them, brick by brick, leaving clouds of dust that obscure anything in both the past and the future.

They have no choice but to focus on the present.

Eddie watches his boyfriend as they climb out of his truck, tracing the exhaustion that seems to be pressing each of Buck’s limbs further into the ground. Eddie feels the same exhaustion wrap around his own bones, but it’s his worry for Buck that keeps him upright. Buck, whose shoulders are slumped forward, mouth set and eyes dimmed with a melancholy Eddie can’t wipe away. 

There’s a distant look in his expression that Eddie feels, that tells him that neither of them are going to sleep much tonight, if at all.

He quickens his pace, rounds the front of his truck and reaches slowly for where Buck’s hand is, limp by his side. He’s met with no resistance, which both relieves and worries Eddie to multitudes as he tangles their fingers together.

“Come on,” he says softly. 

The house is still and quiet as they step through the threshold, with only the soft hum of Carla’s voice breaking it. It’s way past Christopher’s bedtime, so he doesn't know who she's talking to but as he steps further into the house, he can see her on the phone with someone. She smiles widely as she hangs up, the smile dropping as she catches the expression on their faces.

Buck manages to muster a quick hello to his friend before he moves down the hall. Carla turns a concerned gaze towards him once the other man’s completely out of view, but Eddie shakes his head.

“A kid and his dad.” He doesn’t need to offer anything else, because the wrinkles of confusion smooth out instantly.

“Well, you take care of him and yourself, okay? You want me to stay back? Maybe stop by tomorrow?” 

Her selfless offer makes his lips curve into a tired smile, but he shakes his head. “Nah, I think we’re good. Bobby gave us the next two days off, and I think Christopher might be the only one who can break Buck out of it.”

And himself, he doesn’t say, but she hears it anyway, if the knowing look is any indication.

Carla nods in agreement and Eddie walks her out. By the time he’s gotten back in, even the calming timbre of their friend’s voice has dissipated from the house, leaving nothing but suffocating silence behind. 

The last time it was this quiet...he’d been trapped underground.

It swamps him for a minute, and for a long second, Eddie thinks he never really escaped the tunnel. He exhales a breath, pressing his palms to his eyes hard enough to see colors spark through his mind. He counts — in, one, two, three, out, one, two, three. Slowly, he can smell the leftover tomato sauce from Carla and Christopher’s dinner, hear the barking from his neighbor’s dog and the screech of tires down the street. Three things that hadn’t been in that tunnel.

He can feel that he’s dry, in loose clothes, without a helmet or gloves.

Another three things. He’s here, and he’s home.

When he’s finally managed to dull the edges of his own razor-sharp flashbacks, he goes down the hall to find Buck sitting on their bed, staring at the picture of the three of them mounted on the wall. He’s facing away from Eddie, but he knows exactly what Buck’s doing.

He does it too.

It had been one of those candid photos from another party. Eddie doesn’t even remember which party it was, but he remembers this moment clearly. Buck and Christopher had been cracking jokes with each other and Eddie hadn’t realized that he’d trailed off in the middle of his conversation with Maddie.

This photo was the result of it, and the minute he’d gotten it, he had it enlarged and framed. There isn’t much he uses to decorate his own room, but this photo had to be in here. He’d pinned it up on the far wall so it’s the first thing he sees when he comes into the room, or when he’s laying in bed trying to sleep.

There are bright grins on Buck’s and Christopher’s faces, the two halves of Eddie’s heart. He avoids looking at where he’s perched on the sofa armrest next to Buck, because he knows he’s going to see himself happier than he’s been in years.

He doesn’t know if he wants to see that right now.

“Buck?” Eddie says softly as he rounds the bed, pushing everything down so he can focus on his boyfriend. Buck blinks once, slightly startled as he looks up at him. He slightly regrets not giving more of a warning, but pushes onward. “Let’s take a shower and go to bed.”

He says it arbitrarily; he knows neither of them are getting sleep tonight.

“Can...can we go see Chris first?” Buck looks hopeful, as if he needs to ask Eddie’s permission to see the boy he’d taken under his wing from the very first day. He lets it slide just this once, nodding and holding a hand out.

This time, the hand is more for him than it is for Buck. He needs this proximity to him tonight, more than he’s needed before.

This job of theirs has put more things in perspective for Eddie than war ever did. And he knows it’s because when he was bleeding out in the desert, he was thinking about all the things he’d done wrong, or the things he hadn’t done at all. Those regrets are about _him_ , about the people connected to _him_. But being a firefighter? He doesn’t know any of them. He walks into every situation with less than zero percent idea of what people’s lives are like, but the grief that permeates all these strangers during calls like today’s...it swamps him, too.

Alongside the feeling of failure, as irrational it might be.

He might have the ability to push it down and move on for the time being, drilled into him after years in the Army, but he’d be damned if he ever forgot his empathy for civilians who aren’t trained to witness horror after horror, who aren't trained to bury their grief so they can focus until they're in a situation where they can break. 

Today was one of those horrors.

They stop outside Chris’ door, hand in hand. Buck pushes the door open quietly, revealing Chris sleeping soundly. There’s the stuffed bear Buck got him under one arm, and his face is turned towards them, peaceful and serene.

They stand there for a long time, shoulders pressing further into one another as the minutes tick by, both of them losing more and more of whatever kept them upright in the first place. Vaguely, Eddie thinks this might be a little weird, just standing in the doorway watching Chris sleep, but if it was up to him, he’d have already scooped the kid up and brought him to bed with them.

As it is, there aren’t many things that are up to him anyway. He’s always running ragged between being just a father and being a _good_ one, and he knows that if he wakes Chris up right now, even if it’s just to comfort him and Buck, he knows he’ll feel guilty for it.

Buck’s the one to gently tug him away while Eddie spirals internally, shutting the door quietly. “Let’s go.”

They stand side by side as they strip out of their clothes, only pulling away to get each article off, bumping right back into one another. Eddie switches the hot water on, wrapping a needy hand around Buck’s arm while Buck’s comes to wrap around his bare hip. 

There’s not much else they can do on days like these. Keeping his family close to him is Eddie’s way of dealing with everything, and Buck’s is to keep touching someone, even if he retreats into a shell for a while afterwards.

Eddie doesn’t blame him.

Eddie looks at Buck as they cram together in the tiny shower. He recognizes that fragile look in Buck’s eyes. It’s the same one he gets after days like these. Eddie had asked once, and Buck had told him that he felt guilty for having someone so close, while out there, there were families mourning because maybe they didn’t get there in time.

As much as Eddie had wanted to refute the statement, he couldn’t bring himself to, because that’s exactly where his mind takes him. There _is_ a guilt — rational or otherwise — to taking this much comfort from his boyfriend. _He's_ fortunate enough to have the choice of falling into his partner’s arms after a rough day, but they’ve just left people with empty chairs at their holiday tables.

In his mind, he’s seen enough loss to know that most of these situations, there isn’t anything they can _do_ for these patients. Most of them, if not dead on arrival, would bleed out before they even got to the hospital. Others are already counting their last breaths by the time their firetruck pulls up, sirens and lights blazing.

He knows they do a lot of good; they’ve saved people from impossible situations. Lost them, too, as the course of life goes, but there’s always something that unsettles them all more than anything — the mundane emergencies.

Eddie’s been on both sides of that equation. He’s been on the side of the one hoping his loved one would come out alive, if not unscathed, and he’s been on the side trying to make sure that hurt people see another day. But in both those situations, his mind races with how dangerous even the most mundane tasks become.

The idea of not having any control over fate is what unsettles him the most on nights like these.

Buck’s head dropping to his shoulder brings him out of his wayward thoughts, and Eddie reaches up to wrap his arms tightly around his boyfriend.

“Where’d you go?” Buck asks against wet skin, pressing his lips to Eddie’s shoulder.

Now wasn’t that the question? 

Eddie had been fully prepared to just take care of Buck tonight, knowing that taking care of him would be the same as, if not greater than, taking care of himself. He hates seeing the devastated look on Buck’s face, the aura of grief that hung around him, plain and visible for everyone to see.

Eddie loves this man with all that he has, and to see him hurting...he’s not sure he feels as helpless as he does when he can’t do anything to help.

But he hadn’t been expecting his own mind to wander as far as it did.

It had been two men and their son, T-boned by a drunk driver on slippery roads. By the time they’d pulled up to the scene, they had to call the driver, and one man and the kid dead on arrival.

Veer, the lone survivor they’d pulled from the pinned car, had been inconsolable. He’d thrashed and pushed, delirious with pain as he was to get to his family, pushing past Bobby and Hen as much as he could.

Buck and Eddie had been pulling the remaining two people from the car while Chim confirmed patient status...and by sheer luck, they’d managed to get the last man out right before the car sparked into flames.

Eddie doesn’t know what they would’ve done if they couldn’t even offer the man a chance to bury his partner and kid. As it was, Hen had to push a sedative because Veer was aggravating his own injuries. The terror of being a parent, pulling children out of situations that no one should ever go through, wraps around him tight.

As he turns his head to press his cheek closer to his boyfriend, Eddie realizes that Veer’s family looked like his family does. He and his partner, and Christopher. 

Eddie’s suddenly painfully aware that he once came very close to the same possibility — except he wouldn’t have even known. The tsunami could’ve easily ripped the two most important people in his life from him without his knowledge, and he might’ve not even known for days after. He’d tracked the tsunami for weeks after, his heart breaking for every new body uncovered. That could've easily been Buck and Christopher.

The idea of losing them always nestles itself right in the back of Eddie’s head, but it’s been thrust to the forefront tonight, put into perspective with the photo hanging in their room.

“Probably the same place you’ve been,” he replies finally, tugging Buck closer, even though it’s impossible. Buck says nothing, only shifts his stance to fit them closer together.

He feels his partner’s tension drain, bit by bit as the hot water cascades over them. Eddie reaches up to grab the shampoo, needing to busy his hands with something before his mind raced into territory he wasn’t getting out of any time soon.

“Veer’s partner...Sean, and their kid...they remind you of us, don’t they.” Eddie spoke after a while, gently lathering the shampoo into Buck’s hair even in the awkward position.

“Yeah,” Buck sighed. “It puts a lot of things in perspective, right? You and I...we’ve cheated death so many times.” Eddie was 100% sure they were out of miracles, but before he could say anything, Buck continued. “I know all the stats on this stuff and it’s so fucked up to me. On days like this, I can’t shake the feeling of...why am I here, and they’re not? The other is...what if–”

“No, Buck.” Eddie stopped him, pulling back so he could look him in the eye. “We can’t get lost in the ‘what if it was us.’ Because we’d never be prepared, and we’d never be able to put ourselves out there to face the fact that someone is living a reality they didn’t even think was a possibility.” He thinks about something, and then adds, “all the days spent pacing outside your hospital door, or your OR, or in waiting rooms? Every single minute, I’ve asked myself, what happens if I don’t ever get you back?

“I’ve never had an answer for myself, because a life without you...is not a life I want to live.”

It’s not like Eddie to make strong declarations like that one, and he can tell his boyfriend’s been surprised. As much as he knows that it’s a very real possibility with their line of work, he’s been on the side of losing a partner, and Eddie can confidently say that he’s never prepared himself for any outcome that came of it.

It’s just best not to think of it at all. The thought is too painful to bear, because losing Buck or Christopher would kill Eddie.

“When the tunnel collapsed around you,” Buck starts, voice low and quiet, “I thought I was going to live that reality. It didn’t matter that we weren’t together, but losing what we thought was our only way to you? Eddie, that agony...I don’t ever want to feel that again. Today, just watching Veer...it terrifies me.”

Eddie tilts Buck’s head into the water, lifting a hand to guard his eyes from the soap rivulets. “I know.”

And he does. He remembers the gripping fear of nearly losing his best friend not even two whole weeks after losing his wife. He remembers the rope rescue, watching from a stairwell window in horror when Buck’s lifeline burned straight through without a fully inflated cushion to catch him. He remembers standing on the rooftop of a skyscraper, no eyes on the bus they were stabilizing and feeling an explosion that sent his stomach straight down to the ground floor. He'd had to force himself to stay put in all three situations, calling upon every drop of self-control he possessed to avoid making any rash decisions in a blind panic.

They don’t say anything else, Buck picking the shampoo to knead it through Eddie’s hair in silence. Hot pressure pricks at his eyes at the feel of Buck’s fingers in his hair, sensing the unbridled affection in the touch.

“Veer’s going to go back home...to a home he made with his husband and kid, and they won’t even be there,” Eddie whispers, squeezing his eyes shut. Buck’s touch becomes a little more insistent, and he steps even closer. Their own home's every wall is permeated with a multitude of memories that are like photobooks, flipping through all the times they've shared, good or bad.

He doesn't know Veer's going to step into his home.

They finish the rest of their shower in silence, toweling off and pulling on a pair of shorts each. Eddie flips back the covers so they can slide in.

Just like he predicted, neither of them are inclined to sleep tonight, despite the battering exhaustion carved into each muscle. Buck flips over onto his stomach, tilting his head away from Eddie so he can peer at the photo on the wall again.

When his boyfriend reaches blindly for his hand, settling it in the middle of his back, Eddie takes it as an invitation to scoot closer, turning mostly on his stomach, too. He fixes his gaze on the picture, praying selfishly with every inch of his soul that he never has to live without his family in his lifetime.

The photo makes it easier for the two of them to look over Christopher in a sense, too. His bright laughter seems to permeate the whole frame, and that alone is enough for both of them to stay put, instead of camping outside his bedroom door.

There’ve been many nights where Eddie has done just that, pressing his back against the wall and hoping that he didn’t accidentally wake him up. Buck has the same impulse he does, and the photo frame solves that for them.

The restless twitch under Buck’s skin settles the longer Eddie’s palm presses into his skin, and in an effort to make him relax further, Eddie starts a steady pattern of random shapes on Buck’s skin, sweeping over the damp canvas of his back, connecting the littered birthmarks and blemishes that he’s traced multiple times with his mouth. It’s like following a familiar trail, one that comforts him in ways Eddie’s become used to after all these years.

Suddenly, Buck turns his head, locking eyes with Eddie. He musters up a smile from somewhere, tracking his gaze over his boyfriend’s features and committing them to memory. The crease between his brows hasn’t gone away, and Eddie shifts to smooth it out, tracing his fingers along the line of Buck’s cheek as he does so.

“You’re my partner, Eddie,” Buck says, voice hardly a whisper. “I don’t want to live without you either.”

Eddie moves closer so he can press a kiss to Buck’s cheek, taking in the scent of his hair. “I’m going to try my hardest to make sure neither of us do, and I know you will too.”

There aren’t any promises made, nothing to incite misplaced hope for things that would never be in their control, but somehow it’s enough for them.

Buck’s mouth twists ruefully as he tilts his head, tucking his face into the side of Eddie’s neck. And when the tears come, they come for both of them, Buck’s tears dampening Eddie’s skin and Eddie’s dampening Buck’s curls. It’s cathartic and releases some of the tension that had been tightening periodically around his chest, but it’s painful enough that they only barely manage to stifle any sound.

It’s not until his own tears subside that he realizes that Buck’s probably fallen asleep exactly like this. He’s surprised but also relieved by it, knowing that the emotional night took its own toll. Eddie casts a glance over his boyfriend’s shoulder to the family photo again, his fingers moving to trace a pattern of letters on Buck’s skin, keeping his touch light.

_I L-O-V-E Y-O-U_

They haven’t said the words yet, and Eddie doesn’t want to give him them after a night like this one, but he knows that it’s there. He’s confident in the knowledge that Buck loves him and he loves Buck, whether they say it or not.

Eddie scrubs at his eyes as much as he without jostling Buck, pulling him closer and trying to fall asleep himself.

It’s not until he’s nearly asleep that he feels two taps on his skin, and then the same letters mapped onto his own skin, with three more. He smiles, kissing Buck’s head as the man’s breathing evens out completely. Slowly, he begins to drift off again, those words burning through his side, where Buck’s hand rests.

_I L-O-V-E Y-O-U T-O-O_

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how to write a) endings or b) titles so yikes on those fronts. I hope you liked this! <3
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr at [zeethebooknerd](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/zeethebooknerd) or on Twitter at [tkreyesevandiaz](https://twitter.com/tkreyesevandiaz).


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